Valley Avenue

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Valley Avenue is an approximately 2¼ mile east-west street running along the southern slope of Red Mountain from Green Springs Highway in the west to Richard Arrington Jr Boulevard South (18th Street South) in the east. The road continues to the west as West Valley Avenue and to the east as 21st Avenue South. Except for the approximate half mile strip of commercial lots east of Green Springs, most of Valley Avenue is lined with apartment complexes.

The original portion of Valley Avenue was built for Valley View Apartments in 1948 and extended only about eight-tenths of a mile from 18th Street to Valley View Drive. In the 1960s, the road was extended to connect 18th Street, which was still U.S. Highway 31 at the time, to Green Springs Highway.

From Nob Hill Drive to 18th Street, Valley Avenue runs along the Birmingham and Homewood city borders. Valley Avenue is not, however, the official border and approximately 1.7 miles of the road are within Homewood. The irregular border has given rise to situations where children in the same apartment complex, and even the same building, might attend different city schools. The deciding factor in some cases is which city the apartment's main bedroom is in.

In 2014, Homewood commissioned a study by Goodwyn, Mills & Cawood, which was performed by Skipper Consulting, which found that 16,600 cars travel between Mecca Avenue and the Palisades Boulevard/Beacon Parkway East intersection on a daily basis. The study was done in advance of a repaving project funded through an ATRIP Grant expected to be completed in mid- to late-2015. Homewood officials were unable to find any records of Valley Avenue being repaved for over 20 years before that. The project would convert the road from Mecca to Moretti Circle from an undivided, 4-lane road to 3-lane road including a central two-way turn lane.

Notable locations

Birmingham (Glen Iris neighborhood)

Homewood

References